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The council of the Italian region of Puglia is about to approve the law proposed last December that will make the use of open source and open standards mandatory for the region's public administrations, according to news reports.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) invites individuals, community groups and institutions to celebrate the Document Freedom Day (DFD) on March 30th. DFD is a global day to celebrate Open Standards and open document formats and its importance. Open Standards ensure the freedom to access your data, and the freedom to build Free Software to write and read data in specific formats.

One member of the European Parliament and a handful of their advisors and assistants started a free software group last Saturday, aiming to increase the use of free and open source software in the European Parliament's IT infrastructure. The user group is open to all who works in the European Parliament, including staff and assistants working in political groups.

Among the budget cuts California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed to health care, prison, environment, and other parts of the state budget, there's one area that has a good chance of actually getting a budget increase: open source in IT.

Clearly, the 2010 IT Salary Guide reveals that average starting salaries are suffering a rough patch. It's a bit grim to look at the list of IT salaries and see numbers that have fallen since last year: database administrator, down 4.1%; systems administrator, down 2.8%; IT manager, down 2.4%. Factoring in inflation, these modest declines represent true budget discomfort.

Anyone who’s been in the tech field for a while knows that IT harbors a few surprises - and not all of them are good ones. TechRepublic editor in chief Jason Hiner put together this list of some hidden aspects of the IT profession.